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Sandrena dipped her hands into the cool waters of the creek and scrubbed them free of blood.
Her fingers still trembled at the thought of that scene of carnage. She hadn't known what to expect when she stepped into the roundhouse, but what she found was more horrific than anything she could have imagined.
Korilia's words had done no justice in describing that nightmare.
Sandrena tried to force it out of her mind, but it was rooted in there firmly, as pervasive as the cloying scent of blood sticking to her clothes. She doubted she would ever be able to wash out that smell. When her hands were as clean as they were going to get, she cupped them in the water and brought it to her lips. She swished the water around and spit it out in an attempt to get rid of the residual taste of vomit.
The six of them had completed their task with resolve and determination. None of them complained. The dead had been buried; that was all they could do for them. Korilia wept over the mass grave and said a prayer to her Iron Gods, asking them to grant these people rest until their next lives.
Sandrena had said no prayer for them. She was too numb to think of one.
Now, however, as she knelt next to the creek, she found herself humming that same happy tune, though it, too, seemed only partly effective in washing away the residue of that horrible experience.
She was suddenly seized by another horrid memory. This one, of her sister.
Quickly she pulled her hands out of the water, dried them frantically on her dress, and stalked away from the creek's edge.
"Gods," said Korilia behind her, "she finally stopped that damned racket." There was a wistful quality to her voice that made her words unconvincing.
Sandrena didn't rise to the bait. Instead, she walked over to where Rayell, the Shannodswoman, stood lookout. Leaning against her thin spear, eyes forward as she silently watched the horizon, Rayell looked like a statue in a Heroes' Gallery and not at all like her brown-skinned clansmen. Her long plaited hair, as purely white as the rest of her, fell nearly to the skirt of her leather armor. Like Dormaun, Rayell was strikingly beautiful, but in a very different way. Whereas Dormaun was gentle and delicate, Rayell was of a martial beauty. A jewel-encrusted dagger, with a blade forged of folded steel by a master smith, sharpened to wicked edge.
Best admired from a distance, thought Sandrena, as she closed that distance.
At her approach, Rayell turned. "Spear Mother." Her bow was barely deferential. And barely even noticeable.
Sandrena could feel the woman's piercing gaze, and with the reassuring feel of Motherspear pressed against her back by her pack, she felt that she could meet that gaze.
If with some discomfort.
"Anything?" she asked.
Rayell turned back to her study of the distance. "No."
An awkward silence stretched. The others were still down by the creek, taking their time by Sandrena's count. She chided herself for the insensitive thought; no doubt they were just as shaken as she was by what they had just gone through.
Rayell tensed. Frowning, she lifted herself up on her toes. She was a few inches shorter than Sandrena, but as she was wont to remind them now and then, Rayell could see up a flea's asshole from a mile away. "Someone's coming," she said, then sneered. "A woman. On a horse."
Sandrena didn't bother to acknowledge Rayell's obvious feelings of the mounts used by other clans. "Can you see who it is? Are they... like us?"
"No," said Rayell, squinting, "her skin has some color to it, if her hair doesn't. She's wearing metal... steel plate." Her grip tightened on her spear. "She appears armed."
As if sensing Sandrena's growing anxiety, the other four women joined them, gathering in a loose circle around her in a seemingly subconscious attempt to protect their Spear Mother. Sandrena knew what they had been tasked to do, and had even, in some half-hearted way, resigned herself to the necessity of killing. But she had seen enough death that day, and wasn't looking forward to the prospect of more.
Besides, she felt weak out here, exposed. She could fight like a Born Sword in the mists of her own clan—most Mist Clansmen could—but here, she was less than the others.
She hated being helpless. She was haunted by her feelings of helplessness nearly every time she remembered her sister.
Sometimes, she didn't even know why the Lady had chosen her to bear Motherspear.
Perhaps it was because she was so weak. She needed it just to equal the others.
No, she thought with a tinge of bitterness. There are others in Mist Clan who are stronger than me, more suited to such an important task. I was just more convenient to use. Her mind drifted back to the day when she found what was to become Motherspear. She had become one with the mist, her being dispersed within it, at once a part of it yet separate. She was speeding through it, feeling the rhythm of the land as it brushed against her, providing accompaniment for the song that was ever in her mind. She was alone, as she usually was when she did this. It was something she didn't feel she could share with anyone. For some reason, the experience was intensely personal.
Something had tugged at Sandrena's awareness, like a throbbing dissonance, wrecking the harmony she felt. Curious, she had swum through the currents of mist to investigate.
It was a thin crack in the side of a mountain, far from civilization. In her incorporeal mist state, Sandrena had had no problem navigating it. At one point, as she neared the heart of the mountain, she had felt something immensely powerful pulsing nearby, but the path to it was blocked by a massive door of solid gold, sealing the room against the mists and thus against her. It wasn't the source of the dissonance she had felt, so she ignored this other peculiar thing and continued on.
The chamber she finally came upon was huge, much larger than she had imagined being in the heart of the mountain, but more significant was what was in the chamber. A massive device of some sort, the function of which she could not determine. It looked like the bud of a rose, made of what appeared to be hammered bronze. Radiating from the base of this structure were six long and narrow thorns, all of them white, and pierced on these thorns were the bleached white bodies of giants.
Sandrena had traveled over much of Mist Clan lands and had seen many amazing things, but nothing had ever astonished her quite like that chamber and the secrets it held within.
The sheer scale of things was staggering. The giants were enormous. She could have easily fit in the palm of one of their hands. Yet even they were dwarfed by the monstrous contraption that dominated the center of the chamber.
The dissonance she felt was almost a physical force disturbing the mists. Fearing what it might do to her if she remained in mist form, she returned to her corporeal state at the bottom of the chamber, standing naked but for her soulbound sword, which could turn into mist as she did.
Someone other than the giants had been in this chamber before, she discovered. Bones, rusted armor and weapons, a few shreds of what appeared to be cloth, and the rotted remains of a leather satchel were all that was left of them. Obviously not Mist Clansmen, since they died as rotting bodies in the mist rather than dispersing into it; but what outlanders were doing here in this forgotten chamber, she had no idea.
For some reason she didn't then understand, she felt compelled to climb the giant apparatus, and then clamber out onto one of the thorns. Once there, she began to saw off the tip as if it were the most natural thing to do in that situation. It wasn't until later that she questioned the reason for her actions. It was as if her will had not been her own at the time.
It was a trial getting the spike tip out of the mountain's heart, as it didn't seem to want to vaporize like her soulbound sword did when she became mist, but manage it she did. Along the way back home, she found a shaft of bamboo that almost seemed made to fit her new spike. Before she knew it, she had made a spear.
That night, as she lay in her bed, with her strange, newly-created spear lying on the floor next to her, Sandrena had her first dream that was not a memory.
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sp; She had dreamed of the Lady of the Fourth World.
Remembering that day made Sandrena almost forget the rider coming towards them, but she quickly came back to herself when the beat of hooves began to reach her ears. She squinted as the beginnings of an identifiable shape slowly rose up in her vision.
At her side, Rayell gasped and quickly dropped to a knee with her head bowed.
The other women quickly followed suit. Only Sandrena stood there, eyes wide and mouth agape in disbelief. No. It can't be. It's not really her.
But there was no mistaking the face that had haunted her dreams since that day in the mountain's heart.
The Lady pulled up her mount alongside the group to study them. Even though Sandrena had seen the Lady's face in her dreams before, she had always seemed fuzzy, giving her little more than an impression of what she looked like. Now, seeing the Lady in stark reality caused Sandrena's breath to catch in her throat.
The Lady's white hair, as white as Sandrena and her companions, fell in damp ringlets around her copper-colored face—although her face was not copper-colored like a Shannodsman's was, but actually glinted with a slight metallic sheen. The irises of her eyes gleamed like polished silver, in contrast with her pitch black pupils, which seemed to swallow the light around them. Everything about her was arresting and frightening, and completely alien to anything Sandrena had experienced in the waking world... yet something about the Lady carried with it the scent of the familiar. Sandrena had no idea what could possibly be familiar about such an awesome being.
Even the suit of armor she wore was unlike anything Sandrena had ever seen. It was expertly crafted, finely tooled, etched with sweeping designs from edge to edge. Though it fit the Lady's body closely, it seemed comprised of crests and waves that crashed about her, as if the Lady had captured the soul of the Sea and forged this suit of armor from it. In no way did it hinder her motion; it was as if the armor yielded itself to her implacable will.
Sandrena felt the power of that will overcome her, and her knees seemed to fold under her of their own accord until she was on her hands and knees, panting with the effort of staying awake. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the sensation lifted, and Sandrena felt herself again. Awed and afraid, she lifted her head to peer wide-eyed at the Lady.
With absolute grace, she slid from her mount and stood before them, the exquisite hilt of her broadsword looming over her shoulder like a promise of unfettered violence.
"Welcome, Lady," intoned the other five women in unison.
Those silver eyes were fixed upon Sandrena.
She stared back, transfixed, for how long, she didn't know. Eventually, Sandrena blinked to clear her head and slowly, with all the effort she could muster, rose to her feet, clutching Motherspear tightly in her sweaty fist.
Unable to meet the Lady's eyes, Sandrena stared at her neck. She lifted Motherspear in front of her, parallel to the ground, as if in presentation. "I am Spear Mother, the one you appointed to lead this expedition to kill a god."
"So you are."
With a jolt, the world turned black and Sandrena was falling. Something huge crashed into her back. The ground, she thought.
She lay there, dazed and blinded, not really sure what had happened. Dimly she heard the others cry out and moan in pain, followed by the jingle of tack and the sound of booted feet hitting the ground.
Someone knelt at Sandrena's side and gently lifted her head, bringing with her a wash of fragrance, of flowers and honey and sex and sunlight, that drowned out all other sensation. Sandrena could barely make sense of this or anything else that was happening; all thought seemed to have fled her for the farthest corners of the world. Everything had turned to a shapeless oblivion for her.
"I'm sorry," began that same crushing voice. Instantly all of Sandrena's nerves flared to life. Everything felt so vibrant and pure that the life she had lived before that moment seemed like dead, gray filth in comparison. Waves of excruciating pleasure drowned her endlessly, pummeling her like a quickly rising tide. Each moment was better than the last. Her toes and fingers began to cramp almost beyond endurance, but it was worth it for what she felt. Vaguely, she could hear the moans of her companions redouble, but she realized that they were not the moans of pain, but of ecstasy.
"I'm sorry," came the vicious, wonderful voice again, "but I have no control over this glamour. I've been cursed with it forever and have no way of ridding myself of it. It should get easier the more I speak, I hope, so you're just going to have to endure this for a while until you're used to it."
Sandrena could scarcely make out the words, much less their meaning. With each sound uttered, molten fire rippled up her spine, traveling out to her fingers in an explosion of rapturous energy. Sandrena never wanted it to end, though some distant part of her suspected that if it didn't soon, she would die.
That glorious, perfect voice continued to speak for what felt like a thousand torturous eternities compressed into a single exquisite moment, until finally all sensation slowly began to fade into nothingness.